Halal snack pack (HSP) 2024

Summary

This ceramic artwork of a halal snack pack (HSP) was made by Kenny Pittock for the 2025 City Gallery exhibition 'The Dirty Dozen'. Curated by award-winning food writer and author Richard Cornish, the exhibition delved into the sometimes-dark, often-uplifting stories behind street food, produce markets and the dining habits of the 19th-century elite. The twelve ceramic artworks produced by Pittock bring to life 12 quintessential Melbourne street foods. All look good enough to eat.

"Our nation’s politics can play out in our food, especially when it has its roots elsewhere. In the early 2000s, at a time of increased tensions and Islamophobia, the halal snack pack (HSP) – a dish of shaved kebab meat, chips and sauces or gravy – was embraced by non-Muslim Australians, an especially welcome pick-me-up for many in the early hours during a night out. It may perhaps have also been a silent but very public way of showing solidarity for an increasingly vilified section of society.

In July 2016, as the dust settled from the federal election, Iranian-born then Labor senator Sam Dastyari extended a rather cheeky olive branch to a freshly minted One Nation senator, Pauline Hanson: he invited her to share an HSP. Hanson responded: ‘It’s not happening, not interested in halal, thank you’." - Richard Cornish, 'The Dirty Dozen' exhibition catalogue